Pushing Fate
by Hoperise
Summary: "Hi, I'm Ned. I thought I'd drop by because basically, we have the same dad." Jaye never had a brother to look out for her. Ned never had a sister to support him. But when Chuck and Olive set out to reunite the long-lost siblings, they'll discover they have more than a parent in common.
1. Part I

Pushing Fate

Setting: Directly in the middle of 'Dim Sum Lose Some' in the PD-verse; set maybe a year after the end of Wonderfalls.

Summary: Jaye never had a brother to look out for her. Ned never had a sister to support him. But when Chuck and Olive set out to reunite the long-lost siblings, they'll discover they have more than a parent in common.

* * *

><p>"Pie delivery!" Chuck said, pushing the doorbell.<p>

"Surprise random pie delivery!" Olive chimed in.

A voice called back from the interior of the house. "Just a minute."

Chuck squared her shoulders, taking a deep breath. "This is a good idea." She looked at Olive to reassure herself. "Right?"

Olive nodded, giving her an encouraging grin and clutching her purse. "Sounded like a good idea when you described it to me."

"Yeah, imagine if we'd have dragged Ned here and we find out that his dad's still an emotional disaster?" Her smile thinned as she pictured the devastation on her boyfriend's face. At least she could take that bullet for her sensitive pie maker.

"And it turns out he's older and crankier and drinks six dollar bottles of sour mash? Oh, Ned would have a trump card of an I-told-ya-so." Olive finished, illustrating the pie maker's would-be panic with a distressed hand wiggle.

The nervous reply on Chuck's tongue was interrupted by the interior door swinging open - only to reveal a brunette in her mid-twenties. She would have been pretty, were it not for the bitter glance she was shooting over her shoulder. "I didn't know bakeries delivered. Sharon, did you order a pie?"

"Did I order a what?" A woman in a bright red pantsuit came up behind the brunette, fastening a sparkling earring in place. She was older, her light blonde hair teased into stiff waves. Sharon squinted at the box in Chuck's hands. "If I wanted pie, I'd have asked Yvette."

Chuck's smile thinned. "Sorry, we're actually looking for an older man that lives here? He won a pie in a raffle. We have a raffle every week. It's very exciting."

Sharon bristled. "The only older man is our dad-"

"Step-dad." The brunette interrupted automatically.

"-Darrin Tyler. You said there was a raffle?"

"No, not him. The man we're looking for would have lived here maybe twenty years ago?" Chuck said.

The blonde raised thin eyebrows and laughed incredulously. "A man who lived here twenty years ago who is not our father-"

"Step-father," The brunette added.

"-won a pie in your raffle?" The blonde finished, ignoring the comments of her (step-?) sister and placing a hand on her hip. "You're going to have to try a little harder to slip that past a lawyer, honey."

Olive pursed her lips. A beat. She leaned in discreetly. "Still living with your parents, then?"

"Not helping!" Chuck hissed.

"I'll have you know I'm house-sitting!" The brunette retorted, crossing her arms over her chest. "I have my very own trailer, thanks."

"Not that you have to defend yourself to these people, but your mobile home does not provide an effective defense." The blonde said, glancing down at the Pie Holers with disapproval.

"So, maybe this was less of a good idea." Olive muttered under her breath.

Chuck's face fell, her shoulders slumping. "Look, keep the pie - we're just trying to get some information. My boyfriend's dad abandoned him twenty years ago we're trying to find out what happened to him. At some point, his dad living here. Do either of you have any information on the previous tenant? A forwarding address maybe?"

A tense moment passed. The brunette's gaze darted over her shoulder, her skin paling.

"Jaye?" Sharon said in a quieter voice, placing a hand awkwardly on her sister's shoulder.

The brunette, Jaye, took a deep breath. "I think you might be talking about my birth dad."

Chuck straightened up, her eyes wide.

Olive squinted. "Did you say 'Dad'?"

"Yeah. He hasn't lived here in a few years. He kinda disappeared, then my mom married Sharon's dad and kept the house." Jaye explained, stuffing her hands in her pockets. "I mean, that sounds like his MO."

It was that moment that Chuck and Olive realized -

"You have the same eyes as him." Chuck breathed, smiling softly.

* * *

><p><strong>notes.<strong>

Other things I posted to tumblr during exams. Friendly reminder that these recent fics come with picsets, if you're interested.

**Don't write the story. Live the story.**


	2. Part II

Pushing Fate

Setting: Directly in the middle of 'Dim Sum Lose Some' in the PD-verse; set maybe a year after the end of Wonderfalls.

Summary: Jaye never had a brother to look out for her. Ned never had a sister to support him. But when Chuck and Olive set out to reunite the long-lost siblings, they'll discover they have more than a parent in common.

* * *

><p>Chuck and Ned stood before the door of the two-story house. A flock of plastic flamingos keeping watch by the driveway was the only addition which marred Ned's memory from that fateful Hallowe'en twenty years ago. He took a deep breath, attempting to summon his flighty courage.<p>

"I would ask what changed your mind," Chuck said quietly from her place by his side.

"Except?" Ned replied, his stomach fluttering with anxiety.

"Except you haven't rung the doorbell, which will be proof that you have changed your mind," Chuck said. She looked up at him, then glanced away. "Right, anything I say now is tempting fate."

He pursed his lips, his eyebrows pressed together in worry. "It's easier to make assumptions about Dad and why he did what he did, than admit I don't

know. I don't know my sister, or what it would be like to know her..." Ned eyed the doorbell, ducking his head. "And the finding-out part makes me a little queasy."

Chuck shifted closer, holding her own hand in lieu of his and saying softly, "Well, whatever happens, I'll be right here, okay?."

He looked at her gratefully, thinking again how lucky he was to have her. "Thanks." Ned let out a nervous chuckle, braced himself and rang the bell. He stepped back and looked up at the rafters of the porch, heaving a nervous sigh.

The sound of approaching footsteps. The door swung open to reveal a brunette with the same gray eyes he stared at in the mirror every morning. She was about a head shorter than him, wearing a flimsy yellow cotton vest over a denim shirt. Her hair was slightly frazzled and her eyeliner was smudging lightly into her crease - the classic look of a shift worker just off the clock. The young woman Chuck had described as Jaye looked from her to Ned. "Hello?"

"Hi, I'm Ned. I thought I'd stop by because, basically, we have the same dad." He blurted out, hands locked behind his back in white-knuckled tension.

She froze with one hand on the doorknob, her expression mirroring his anxiety. The blonde older sister came trotting down the hall, slipping a hand onto her shoulder. "Well, don't just stand there!" she said pointedly to Jaye.

Jaye looked to the side quickly, as though someone had called her name. Then, a look of dawning comprehension appeared on her face. She looked up at him with a wide, plastic smile and yanked the door open. "Right! Come on in!"

His stomach flip-flopped. Unsure of how to take the tepid reaction, Ned looked to Chuck for reassurance. She smiled at him and tucked her folded hands under her chin.

Here went everything.

* * *

><p>Jaye looked cautiously over her shoulder toward the kitchen, where Chuck graciously kept Sharon occupied. Turning back to him with a whirl of her sable brown hair, Jaye leaned in. With her sister out of the way, her defenses had fallen back and she looked at Ned with a mixture of hope and fear. "Tell me about Dad."<p>

Ned let out a slow breath, rubbing his hands together to rid them of nervous energy. "Where do you start? It's hard to sum up a person in a few words - it's a bit like taking a picture of fireworks with your phone camera. You can capture the gist of it, but you're always going to miss the nuance, the subtlety, the emotion of the moment..."

Jaye's expression flickered with hurt, and Ned realized that his ramble was less elucidating than he'd intended. He decided to stick to concrete terms. He searched his memory for something positive or even neutral to share. It would be so easy to demonize the father she barely remembered, but Jaye deserved a complete image - not just the shadows with which she was already familiar. Ned mustered his strength and began to tug at the peeling corner of the wallpaper covering the father-shaped room in his heart.

"Dad was a romantic. He liked flashy displays of affection." Probably the one positive thing he'd learned from the man. Ned smiled down at his hands, bittersweet memories trickling back. "He used to put on magic shows for me in our backyard or take my mom on these spontaneous outings. He traveled a lot for work, so he'd be gone for weeks at a time. Then he'd come home and tell us we were going for a drive, and it would turn out that he'd planned a weekend away."

"He was charismatic, you know, a smooth-talker. Maybe it was because I was just a kid, but to me it seemed like Dad was always the center of attention in any room he was in. He could talk circles around anybody. He could fit in anywhere, with anyone. He made it seem- effortless." That was one trait he certainly hadn't picked up. Ned shifted on the couch, hunching his shoulders self-consciously. He'd never learned the secret to his father's confidence. He'd always felt uncomfortable in his own skin.

Ned let out a short, pained laugh, and murmured, "I used to _worship _him." And then- he was gone.

The pie maker's confession hung heavy in the air.

"I already let him in. He's as in as he can be." Jaye muttered urgently, looking at the hardwood floor.

Startled by the non sequitur, Ned sat back and raised his eyebrows. "Well, um, it's good that you've processed Dad leaving. I don't think I've figured it out for myself just yet."

Looking up as though she'd forgotten he was in the room, Jaye frowned. "That's not- uh, okay." She bounced her knee on the floor absent-mindedly. "How long have you known about me - about this house and everything?"

"Maybe twenty years now. When I was in boarding school, Dad sent me a postcard with the address. I snuck out of school on Hallowe'en because I hadn't heard from him in a while and I wanted to surprise him. Instead, he surprised me- with a new family." The pie maker replied, his head tilting slightly and his brow furrowing in distress.

His half-sister let out a moan, one hand flying to her forehead. "You must hate me. I'd hate me. Ned, I'm sorry I'm the reason our dad ran off on you."

This statement jerked him from his reverie. As the pie maker stared at the half-sister he'd never asked for, he recognized that though she had her mother's mouth and cheekbones, they had the same heart. The same protective outer shell, the same insecurities, the same fear of risk and rejection. And like it or not, as a brother, he owed it to the both of them to set her straight.

"That's not true. I used think that Dad abandoned me because of you, and I spent a long time resenting you for it. But that's not what happened. Dad abandoned me because of him. He had his own reasons for leaving, and it's not because either of us did something wrong or bad." Ned spoke with the same amount of certainty with which he had believed the opposite for years.

Lines of tension faded from Jaye's shoulders. She peered at Ned through her fingers, then let her hand fall into her lap. "I think that you're the only one to tell me that that I'd actually believe."

Ned offered her a crooked smile. "I don't know about you, but I've spent too long trying to puzzle through Dad's motives. Maybe he really was emotionally stunted and afraid of getting close. Maybe he was just a jackass. But the truth is, I don't know. And I'm ready to find out the truth, whatever it means."

Troubled, she bounced her knee and fiddled with the edge of her sleeve. "I had a family and an Ivy-League education to help me, and I still didn't turn out half as well-adjusted as you. You'd fit right in with the Tyler clan. My family would jump for joy if they had you instead of me."

Ned laughed incredulously. "If I had a family like yours, there's no way I'd be who I am today. Maybe I'd have gone to university instead of culinary school. Maybe I'd have done something more academic and never figured out what I actually wanted to do with my life. Who knows? But you of all people shouldn't mistake successful for well-adjusted. I'm a work in progress, just like you. I might be a couple of steps further along the road, but I think we're walking the same path."

Like air deflating from a balloon, the sincerity drained from Jaye's face. She folded her arms and looked away, drawing her feet under herself. "I don't know about that. Our 'paths' or whatever aren't as similar as you might think."

He could see her slipping away from the conversation. In the kitchen, he could hear Chuck and Sharon growing louder as they shifted toward the living room. But there was one question that had been burning within - one thing he needed to know while they still had a modicum of privacy.

"Jaye, I wanted to ask- from what you can remember, or from what Karen told you-" His face flushed, his heart suddenly in his throat for some stupid reason. "Did Dad ever, um, mention me at all? Anything about a son, or, I don't know, wanting one maybe?"

She bit her lip, clenching her arms tight to her body. "Not that I can remember. Not that Mom ever mentioned. But you could ask her, once she gets back in town."

"No, forget about it. It was stupid to ask." Ned inhaled sharply, scrubbing his face with one hand to hide the redness of his eyes. He let out another sharp, humourless laugh. "What a bastard. You know that feeling where you thought you'd dealt with something by pushing out of sight, but really it was out renting a bulldozer and getting ready to run you over?"

Sharon announced her unwelcome return with a haughty laugh. "Oh please, that's Jaye all over. She's the queen of avoidance. She doesn't deal with her problems unless they actively have a gun in her face."

"Shut up, Sharon." Jaye hissed.

The blonde ignored her. "She was too chicken to tell her boyfriend about her feelings until after he had already re-married his ex. Instead of fessing up and talking to him, she actually pushed him into the marriage and stood as a witness! Can you say, 'commit-o-phobe'?"

"Shut _up_." Jaye repeated, fingers clenching the arm of the couch. Her gaze had shifted away from her sister and towards the cow-themed tea seat on the end table.

Chuck hovered anxiously, wringing her hands at the rising tension. "Sharon, can I have a word with you in private?"

"You know, Jaye is so scared of change that she tracked our deported maid across the border and tried to smuggle her back in the trunk." Sharon went on, letting out the oblivious laugh of the family over-sharer.

Jaye slid her hands over her ears, then slapped the couch fiercely. "Shut up, shut up, _SHUT UP!_ I'm doing this my way!" She snapped, refusing to look at Sharon and addressing the cow creamer instead. Flushing with anger, she snatched her keys from the side table and bolted out the front door.

* * *

><p><strong>notes.<strong>

I appreciate the dysfunctional functionality of the Tyler clan in Wonderfalls, but I think that the family dynamic would change radically if Karen had married Darrin after she had already had Jaye with another man. Without Aaron in the picture to balance out the squabbles between Sharon and Jaye, I think they would have had a rockier time trying to sort out their issues. Gaining a new step-mom and step-sibling would have been tough on little Sharon. I think they would have eventually made it, but there would be a lot more deep-seated problems for a 24-year-old learning to deal with her newfound ability to talk to animate objects.

I am a huge fan of the idea of 'the same actor playing different characters in different shows is actually the same person in all universes'. One more installment to go - it's almost done and should be up around New Years. Merry Christmas to you, whenever you happen to read this!

**Don't write the story. Live the story.**


	3. Part III

Pushing Fate

Setting: Directly in the middle of 'Dim Sum Lose Some' in the PD-verse; set maybe a year after the end of Wonderfalls.

Summary: Jaye never had a brother to look out for her. Ned never had a sister to support him. But when Chuck and Olive set out to reunite the long-lost siblings, they'll discover they have more than a parent in common.

* * *

><p>"Let him in, let him in, let him in!" the cow creamer mooed insistently.<p>

"Stop! Stop talking to me, you stupid cow! There's nobody there! You won't let me sleep for a second and you don't make any sense! Why would you talk if you're not going to say anything useful?" Jaye cried, face flushed with anger. She'd been attempting to decrypt the muse's cryptic orders ever since the pie ladies landed on her doorstep and had come no closer to soothing it into silence. A few days of opening her doors and her mouth to complete strangers had left her uncomfortably vulnerable. In her exposed state, Sharon's words had cut too close. So what if she was taking it out on a fakey porcelain bovine figurine. Her neighbours all thought she was insane already.

There was a hesitant knock at the door.

"Jaye? Can I come in?" Ned's quiet voice made itself heard through the wall of her trailer.

The cow fixed gentle, honey-brown eyes on her. "Let him in."

She swung the door open to see her estranged half-brother clutching one elbow like a nervous middle-school girl, shifting from foot to foot.

"What?" Jaye said, more snappily than she intended.

His eyebrows were drawn together in concern. "Something's bothering you, and I wanted to see if there's anything I can do to help."

"Let him in," urged the cow. "All the way."

She choked back a desperate noise, then stepped out of the doorway. "Okay, fine. Have it your way."

"Thanks," Ned replied, the door swinging shut behind him. He was much taller than her usual guests - he had to duck his head to stand upright in the doorway.

The cow creamer stared at her judgementally.

Jaye sighed and gestured to her kitchen table. "Sit down before you strain something. I've got instant coffee or chai tea. Pick your poison." Let her mother never accuse her of inhospitality to long-lost family.

"I'll have tea, thanks." Ned replied, taking a seat.

Setting a dingy kettle on to boil, Jaye turned to dig the tea from the back of the cupboard above the stove. Her sable hair swept back from her neck, exposing the reason why she couldn't wear her hair up any longer.

"What happened to your neck?" Ned asked, startling her somewhat.

The cow wanted honesty? Oh, she could be honest - not that anyone believed her.

"A psycho nun tried to cut the devil out of me." Jaye replied with a bitter grin, clunking two mugs down on the table. There was a proper, formal way to serve tea, but she'd abandoned her mother's etiquette lessons behind at Brown somewhere between all-night study sessions for Ethics of Medieval Europe and Post-Modern Metaphysics. Dropping the tea bags inside, Jaye straightened up and pulled her hair out of the way to reveal a long, thin scar that ran across the left side of her neck.

Ned nodded and made a sympathetic noise. "They're more troublesome than you'd think. Two weeks ago, I helped a friend solve the murder-which-wasn't-a-murder of a nun-who-wasn't-a-nun. A pig pushed her off the bell tower."

She froze and narrowed her eyes. He wasn't mocking her near-death experience, was he? "Are you making fun of me?"

Her half-brother set his chin down on his arms despondently. "God, I wish I were."

"Look, I'm sorry you had to come all this way to figure out that you lost the genetic lottery. The only thing that I excel at is being simultaneously useless and crazy." Jaye replied, her nostrils flaring. She shoved the cow aside and set a plastic container of coffee whitener on the table a bit harder than necessary.

"I spent six months in a psychiatric facility because things that shouldn't talk talk to me. I can't sleep because they won't leave me alone, and the stupid medication I'm taking doesn't do anything to make them shut up, so either I'm extra-strength crazy, or something is actually talking to me, and I don't know which freaks me out more! So you want to help with that? You think you can fix what three psychiatrists and four milligrams of risperidone a day can't? Take your best shot."

The kettle whistled on the stove. Jaye turned away with a flip of her hair, turned the burner off and grabbed the kettle, pouring steaming water into their mugs.

"Are you serious?" Ned said, straightening up. His eyes had gone wide, but he didn't look disgusted or frightened. "Things talk to you? Dead things?"

"Inanimate objects with animal faces." She corrected in a mumble, setting the kettle aside and leaning against the storage cupboard. "And a dead Native American woman, but I think that was a one-time thing. They tell me to do stuff - stuff which usually turn out to be nice for people, but they never explain the end goal. So I stumble around, trying to interpret their fortune-cookie advice and getting into trouble along the way."

Ned fidgeted. He spoke slowly, annunciating each word with care. "Do you have to touch them to make them start talking, or-"

"Nope! They just start chattering away on their own, and if I try to ignore them or disobey, bad things happen! So go ahead, tell me I'm certifiable and walk out the door, just like Dad did!" Jaye plunked herself in the chair opposite Ned, staring at him as though expecting him to leave that very moment.

The cow was silent. "Nothing to add? Good."

"I don't think you're crazy, Jaye." Ned replied. In a rare moment of tenderness, he put his hand on her wrist. "You've got a gift."

"Being fate's bitch? Some gift." Jaye scoffed, then looked up. At his serious, genuine expression she softened. "You- you really believe me?"

Ned nodded, letting out a slow breath. "Yeah. Because... I've got a gift, too."

This time, it was her eyes that went wide.

"There's two things that I'm good at. I bake pies and wake the dead."

She blinked, uncomprehending. "You wanna run that by me again?"

He drew the tea bag from his mug, stirring in a couple teaspoons of sugar. His words came slowly, as though he weren't used to explaining this out loud - which made sense, all things considered. "I can bring dead things back to life by touching them. Plants, animals, people. But if they stay alive for more than a minute, something else in proximity has to die. Natural order and whatnot."

"That- that's incredible!" Jaye said, spellbound.

Her half-brother shuddered. "There's a catch. The first time I touch a dead thing, it comes back to life. The second touch, dead. Again. Forever."

"That's kind of a bummer." Figuring her tea had steeped enough, Jaye took the bag out and set it aside.

He laughed darkly, his gaze falling. "You're telling me. My mom died of an aneurysm, right in front of me. I was just a kid, I didn't know what to do - so I brought her back to life. Wound up killing Chuck's dad across the street."

"Oh, god!" Jaye recoiled, horrified. "Why do these things have to be so dramatic?"

"I know, right?" Ned shook his head, giving another of those short, sad laughs. He took a sip of his tea and cleared his throat. "The funny part is, I couldn't even keep her with me. She tucked me in, kissed me goodnight - and that was it."

She dug a hand into her hairline. "I'm sorry." Jaye had griped and moaned about being a slave to destiny, but perhaps being able to thwart it came with its own set of problems.

They sat in pensive silence for a moment, thoughts rising and swirling between the more-alike-than-they-thought siblings like steam from their mugs. Jaye tilted her head to the side as two errant thoughts connected. "So wait- in all the time you've been here, I don't think I've seen you touch your girlfriend. Does that mean that she-?"

Ned blanched.

Jaye made an empathetic noise, her shoulders falling. "And I thought Eric and I had it rough."

"We manage." Ned said, thankfully not elaborating on what 'managing' referred to. "I've had my gift for a long time now. But it's only recently that I figured out that when the right people are in the know, even the most difficult gifts become easier to bear."

Sighing, Jaye leaned back in her chair. "People know about my gift in Niagara. They just think I'm crazy."

Ned chewed on his lip, drumming his fingers on the fake wooden table top. "Well, if there's nothing keeping your trailer here, I'm actually in pretty desperate need of some extra help around my restaurant. Chuck and I help a friend with his business, and its been taking up a lot more of our time recently. I've been looking for someone to manage in the afternoons. Does that sound at all interesting to you?"

A powerful rush of temptation swept through her. The freedom of a fresh start where no one knew about her past, learning how to manage her own so-called gift from someone who'd been dealing with his own for twenty years.. "Are you kidding? Hell yeah, it sounds interesting. But.." She thought again. "My boyfriend, my best friend... Everyone that's important to me is in Niagara. I'd like a little distance from my family, but I don't know if I'm ready to take off."

Even as he was offering a significant life change, her half-brother spoke hesitantly, presenting the option without pressure or manipulation. "I could be pretty flexible about the hours - we could try four days on, three days off. You could drive back and see your boyfriend on the weekends. I don't want to rush you into anything, though. Why don't you come out for a visit, just to check things out and see how it feels?"

Jaye puffed out a breath, thinking about her life in Niagara, about Mahandra and Eric, about her occasionally overbearing but always well-meaning family and the pointless job that did not make her happy. She thought about how nice it would be to live near someone who knew what she was going through, someone who could keep an eye out for her. The fact that he left the decision up to her was enticing.

Fear clawed at her stomach with icy fingers. "I don't know. I'm kind of rough to live around. The things that talk to me are usually vague and misleading . Sometimes when I try to do the right thing, people get hurt."

Ned shrugged. "Isn't that true for everybody?"

"That's not what I mean. I'm dangerous. These stupid figurines could tell me to swipe somebody's wallet or blurt out your secret in town square - sure, it's been harmless so far, but who knows when the so-called greater good is gonna need me to run down an old lady?" Jaye replied in exasperation. Her breath hitched slightly. "I shouldn't even be close to the people around me right now. I can't get involved in your life, Ned."

Fiddling with the mug on the table, Ned paused for a moment before finding his words. "I can understand the need to push people away - whether its for their good or yours. I did that for nineteen years. But Jaye, the best things in my life - the sweetest things, the things that have made me the happiest - have come from taking chances. I can't explain it, but there's something deep down in my primal sweet spot that tells me that this is the right thing to do."

Jaye shifted. "I feel that way sometimes. But there's usually an object with an animal face telling me that."

Her brother smiled, the lines on his forehead smoothing slightly. "What are they telling you right now?"

She glanced expectantly at the cow.

The creamer was silent. Fate, it would seem, was leaving this up to her.

"The cow is keeping her opinion to herself, for once." She observed.

"So what do you think?"

That left only one thing. "I guess it depends." She smiled at him playfully. "How good is your pie?"

Ned smiled at her with more warmth and brilliance than any she'd received from her family in a long time. "Why don't we scrounge up some ingredients and find out?"

* * *

><p><strong>notes.<strong>

That's it, I'm afraid. The rest of the Tyler's adventures are up to you and your headcanons (although I'm sure that Jade with her sneaky camera would do a great job helping Emerson on stakeouts).

Happy New Year to you all!

**Don't write the story. Live the story.**


End file.
